


this isn't over yet (this isn't half of what you'll get)

by janewestin



Category: The Devil Wears Prada (2006)
Genre: F/F, Face-Sitting, First Time, Happily Ever After, Now there are feelings too, Pining, Porn With Plot, Porn with Feelings, Porn with all the feelings, Praise Kink, Secret Admirer, Shopping, miranda buys andy pretty things, now it's just smut, thats it thats the plot, yep, yep I did that
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2020-01-14
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:21:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 17,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21949489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/janewestin/pseuds/janewestin
Summary: Every year on her birthday, Andy receives a gift from an unidentified sender.completed 1/13
Relationships: Miranda Priestly/Andrea Sachs
Comments: 402
Kudos: 927





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Special thanks to emungere for her fic Consenting to Dream, which made me realize I had a thing for praise kink fics. This is my little fangirl Mirandy homage to that one <3

_2008_

It arrived the day before her twenty-fifth birthday.

“You order something?” Nate said, tossing the box onto the couch.

Andy picked it up. It was light for its size, and she didn’t recognize the New York return address on the printed UPS label. “No.” 

“Hm.” Nate wandered toward the kitchen, shuffling the remaining envelopes. “Birthday present, maybe.” 

“Yeah.” Andy put the box on the coffee table. “Maybe.”

As a rule, she didn’t open gifts until the day they were meant to be opened, so after Nate had left for work the next morning, she settled on the couch with her laptop and reached for the box. She sliced through the packing tape with the tip of her pen and pulled the flaps back. 

And froze.

Inside was a second box, a prim orange square, tied with a black ribbon. Printed on the ribbon, and on the front of box, was a logo she knew all too well. There was no card, no gift receipt, nothing to indicate the identity of the sender.

Who on _earth_ would be sending her Hermès?

She had gotten plenty of freebies at Runway, true. But she’d never received anything packaged as a gift. Could it be from Nigel? They didn’t text as frequently these days, and he’d never given her anything quite _this_ extravagant before, but she supposed it was possible.

Emily? Doubtful. Although she’d been quite a bit warmer after Andy had delivered the Paris loot.

She untied the ribbon and lifted the lid. Atop the white tissue was a small card, cream-colored and embossed with the Hermès logo. In the center of the card, in black ink, was a handwritten letter A.

Andy turned the card over. Nothing else was on it. She put it to the side and gently unfolded the tissue. 

“Oh, wow,” she murmured.

This was a mistake. _Had_ to be, despite the fact that it was addressed to her, despite the A on the card. She lifted the scarf out and held it up.

“ _Wow,_ ” she said again.

It was oversized and light, concentric circles of black and white “H”s against an emerald-green background. The edges looked as though they were hand-rolled. It must have cost a fortune.

She looked around the room, feeling ridiculously as though she was being punked, and then wrapped the scarf around her neck. It felt like a dream against her skin.

A mistake? Maybe, but she was going to enjoy it for the time being. 

She opened her phone, flipped it around to take a picture of herself wearing the scarf, and composed a text to Nigel. _Was this you_?

The reply came in moments. _Wish I could take credit. Forgot. Happy birthday._ And then, a moment later, _You look good, Six._ Which made her smile.

Her text to Emily went unanswered, and when she called the Hermès store in Manhattan, they told her that without a receipt it was impossible to tell from which store the scarf had been purchased. 

She looked at the card again. It was a pretty unremarkable letter A. Even if Andy had been decent with handwriting, she doubted she would have been able to tell who had written it.

She folded the scarf, put it back in the box, and took it to the closet. She slid it under her stack of T-shirts. If it was a mistake, someone would surely come looking for it. 

They never did.

***

_2009_

“Wow,” Trixie said. “You look horrible. It’s a good thing I stayed over.”

Andy stumbled toward the kitchen. “Thanks,” she mumbled, almost dropping the mug in her hurry to get to the coffee.

“You look very cliche-TV hangover,” Trixie added, “with the sunglasses.”

Andy grunted, then burned her tongue on the coffee.

“The, um.” Trixie slid a piece of paper across the counter. “The girl from the bar gave me her number to give to you.”

The girl. _The girl_. Soft hands and a searching tongue. “Oh my God,” Andy said.

“Sit down before you fall down,” Trixie advised. 

Andy did. “I think I maybe have had some...realizations,” she said.

Trixie smirked. “Thought you might.” She leaned and reached for a box on the sideboard. “By the way, you got a package.”

“Oh, probably my new running belt.” Andy fumbled with a knife, trying in vain to get through the tape.

“Give me that before you lacerate something,” Trixie said, reaching for the box and the knife. She opened it, and her eyebrows shot up.

“This,” she announced, sliding the box across the counter, “is not your running belt.”

Andy looked. And immediately remembered the mysterious Hermès scarf, which had traveled with her from Boston to Cincinnati. 

Gloves. Black leather gloves, with Gucci’s double-Gs in gold at the wrists. 

“Jesus,” Trixie said, smoothing a finger across the back of one. “Who are they from? Not your parents.”

Andy lifted the gloves from their tissue nest. “No,” she said slowly.

“Oh, look, here.” Trixie reached for the tiny envelope and opened it. Pulled out a Gucci-inscribed card. 

Same letter A. Nothing else.

“Are you kidding me,” Trixie said, putting the card back into the envelope. “Do you have a secret admirer?”

“I, uh.” Andy pulled the left glove on, then the right. 

They fit perfectly, of course.

***

_2010_

Emily. It had to be Emily. She didn’t have any other friends from her brief stint at Runway, and Emily had never responded to those particular messages the past two years.

“You’ve moved twice,” Trixie said, sliding into the black taffeta Burberry trench coat that was in this year’s mystery box. “I think at this point it’s stalking.”

“This is the only contact they make,” Andy pointed out, turning the little Burberry card with its now-familiar letter A over and over in her hands. “I hardly think that counts.”

“I wasn’t suggesting you _do_ anything about it.” Trixie cinched the belt and turned to admire herself in Andy’s closet mirror. “Happy birthday,” she added.

***

_2011_

Trixie wasn’t home when the boots came, which was probably good, because although she wore a full size larger than Andy, she would have tried to swipe them.   
  


The apartment in Queens—so much smaller than the one they’d shared in Cincinnati—had quickly become crowded with their shared belongings. Andy had given away a lot of her wardrobe. Not, however, the mystery gifts. 

Same letter A. The return address was the still the UPS store in lower Manhattan.

They were Louboutins. Ankle-height, two-inch heels, black leather like butter. Andy looked them up online. They were over a thousand dollars.

“You must have a name,” Andy said for the third time.

The woman behind the desk sighed. “Ma’am,” she said, “for one thing, we track numbers, not names. For another—”

“I know, I know,” Andy said. She’d gotten the same response last year. UPS wouldn’t give her a a name even if they had it. 

She put the Louboutins on her closet shelf next to the gloves and the scarf. Maybe, when she found out who the sender was, she would finally wear them.

***

_2012_

The birthday box for her twenty-ninth year was a cream-colored Givenchy turtleneck in the softest cashmere she’d ever felt. Putting it on was like being embraced by a—a cloud, or something. 

She turned in front of the mirror. Smoothed the impossibly soft fabric over her stomach and hips. And allowed herself to think the thought she’d been forcing down for the past four years.

_Maybe it’s Miranda_.

***

_2013_

A month before her thirtieth birthday, Andy had an idea.

Whoever was sending these gifts— _not_ Miranda, certainly not Miranda, there was absolutely no way it was Miranda—was keeping tabs on her _somehow_. They’d gotten their hands on every address she’d had. She didn’t have any social media accounts except for a LinkedIn, so that was what they must be using.

She’d been thinking of doing it anyway. Had been contemplating it for at least four months. Trixie, whose hair changed color basically quarterly, was quite possibly more excited about it than Andy herself.

“Do it,” she said, looking at Stella in the mirror.

Stella sliced at the air twice with her scissors, grinned, and neatly hacked off Andy’s ponytail.

*

She changed her profile picture that night. Head turned slightly to the side, so her newly-shorn head was clearly visible. She wore the turtleneck. 

*

The box arrived on the twelfth, three days before her birthday. Trixie came crashing through the apartment door with both arms wrapped around it. “It’s really _big_ this year,” she squealed. 

Andy realized that her heart was hammering. That she’d started to sweat.

Every piece she’d been sent over the past five years had fit flawlessly. Had perfectly accented some aspect of Andy’s appearance. The scarf had brought out her eyes; the gloves made her arms look as graceful as a ballerina’s. The boots looked incredible with everything she owned, and the sweater turned her into some kind of gleaming winter princess. There was only one person Andy had ever encountered who made such impeccable clothing choices.

“Open it,” Trixie ordered, thrusting the box at Andy.

Andy took it with hands that felt like lead. “You know I don’t open gifts until—”

“Come _onnnn_ ,” Trixie wheedled. “Make an exception. _Please_.”

Andy shook her head. “Not this year, Trix.”

”You suck, Sachs,” Trixie groaned.

Andy took the box into her room and put it against the wall, then laid down on her bed and stared at the ceiling.

It was possible the mystery sender hadn’t seen her profile picture. It was possible they didn’t know she’d lopped her hair into a pixie cut. It was possible, sure. But somehow she doubted that was the case.

It couldn’t be Miranda. Not after she’d walked off the job. Surely not. _Surely_. 

That last day in the car, though. She’d slid in next to Miranda, arms full of itineraries and guest lists, and Miranda had looked at her, and there had been—there had been _something._ That look on Miranda’s face. There and gone in a flash, so quick that Andy thought she’d imagined it. 

But then Miranda had done _the thing_ , and Andy knew it was real.

It wasn’t anything. Or wouldn’t have been anything, had Andy not seen her expression the moment before. Miranda had reached up and before Andy could move, could react, Miranda was touching her face. 

One second, maybe two. The pad of Miranda’s finger pressed to the corner of her eye. Wiping a stray smear of eyeliner, maybe, or an eyelash. A whiff of her perfume. Slight flex of the tendons of Miranda’s inner wrist in her peripheral vision.

“There,” Miranda said quietly, and she looked away, but Andy saw it. That same raw expression. Gone in a moment as Miranda started rattling off Andy’s task list for the afternoon.

But Andy had been so shaken by the thing with Nigel—by Miranda’s words not five minutes later—that the additive effect was overwhelming. Unmanageable. She wasn’t like Miranda. She _couldn’t_ be, and not just because of what she’d done at the banquet. 

Miranda, pale and bare-faced in the hotel room, talking about her divorce. Miranda looking at Andy like she saw something in her. Like she _wanted_ something. Miranda’s touch burning her skin.

She hadn’t been able to see it then. She hadn’t realized why she’d panicked until much, much later.

She rolled over. The scarf was folded on her nightstand; she no longer kept it in its box in the closet. She reached for it and shook it over herself. Crossed her hands over her chest, stroking the silky fabric, and thought of Miranda.

*

“That box is killing me,” Trixie said two days later. 

Andy didn’t look up from the submission she was reviewing. “Imagine what it would feel like if it was addressed to you,” she said.

Trixie dropped onto the couch next to her. “You’re mean.”

“I know.” Andy saved her work and closed the laptop. 

“I can’t believe you’re going to make me wait until tomorrow.”

Andy bit her lip. Glanced toward her bedroom. 

“You know what?” she said at last. “I’m not. Let’s open it.”

Trixie let out a whoop and was off the couch and back so fast it made Andy’s head spin. She dropped the enormous box into Andy’s lap. “Yay!” 

“Give me—” Andy reached for her house keys, which she’d tossed onto the coffee table. She poked at the tape with a key and opened the box. 

“What is it what is it what is it,” Trixie bounced while she chanted, her cheeks pink with excitement.

“It’s—” Andy’s breath caught. “Prada.”

Trixie’s eyes went wide. “Shut _up_.”

Andy lifted the Prada box out and opened it.

“Oh, _shit_ ,” Trixie said. 

*

It was a black cocktail dress. When Andy put it on, the bateau neckline lengthened her neck, made her collarbones look delicate and graceful. She stared at her reflection.

“That is,” Trixie said quietly, when Andy came back out into the living room, “the perfect dress for your haircut.”

*

She didn’t take the dress off for a long time, after that. Trixie went to bed at nine-thirty, but Andy stayed in the living room, nursing a glass of wine and reading tabloid articles about Miranda online. She didn’t know exactly what she was trying to find. Some paparazzi photo of Miranda at the Prada store, maybe, buying a black cocktail dress? An unidentified source close to Miranda, relating her spending habits? 

Sure.

At eleven, she finally gave up and closed the laptop. Went into her room. Gazed at herself in the mirror. 

She imagined Miranda’s hands moving over Hermès scarves, the silk slipping between her fingers. Imagined her pressing the end of a pen to her lower lip, thinking of what to write on that first card, and finally deciding on a single letter A. 

Miranda thinking about her. Thinking about _her,_ every year, even after all this time.

She locked her bedroom door. Reached for the scarf and wrapped it around her neck. Sank down on the bed.

Silk at her throat. The gentle scrape of wool at her shoulders, her thighs. She pushed the skirt up and out of the way. 

She closed her eyes. Remembered Miranda’s blue eyes. The way she’d looked at Andy that last day in the car. Expectant. _Wanting_.

Miranda’s fingertips on her skin, the only time she’d ever intentionally touched Andy. It was enough.

Andy came so hard that her vision went black for a moment. She had to pry her teeth off of her lower lip, and her fingers off of the Hermès scarf.

*

Three days later, Andy slipped the very first card—the Hermès one—into an envelope, sealed it, and addressed it to Miranda. She dropped it into the mailbox before she could change her mind.

***

_2014_

Andy left early every day the week of her birthday, specifically to make sure she would be able to pick up the birthday box from the doorman before Trixie saw it. If Miranda was the mystery sender, then this year’s gift would be her response to Andy. She would know, now, that Andy knew it was her. So Andy very much wanted to open this one in private.

It arrived on March thirteenth. Andy locked her bedroom door, sat on her bed, and stared at it. 

It was small this year, about the size of the scarf box. Innocuous, there on her old quilt, and yet Andy felt as though she was sharing the room with a bomb. Whatever was in there would indicate whether or not Miranda was happy to have been found out. 

Either way, it meant that the next move was Andy’s. 

She cut through the packing tape with shaking hands.

Givenchy. Like the turtleneck. Her heart was beating so hard she thought it might actually dance right out of her chest. When she lifted the lid off the inner box, she was hit in the face with a puff of air. 

A puff of air that was scented, unmistakably, with Miranda’s perfume.

“ _Oh_ ,” she breathed, suddenly lightheaded. 

Miranda only wore one scent. TMZ claimed that Helen Mirren had given her a bottle of Clive Christian No. 1 in 2005, and she’d worn it every day since. Andy had breathed its lovely, floral aroma in the elevator after Miranda stepped out. In the back of the town car. Caught in every purse and coat that Miranda had flung onto her desk. She would know it anywhere. 

For a moment, she was back in Paris. Scalding touch by her right eye. Miranda’s gaze, wanting.

She was clutching both hands to her stomach. With effort, she pulled them away and reached for the box. Folded the tissue back.

It could barely be called a camisole. Black silk in crepe de chine, impossibly delicate, spaghetti straps adorned with finely made lace. It was a breath away from lingerie. Andy felt as though all of the air had been forcibly removed from her lungs.

And the card. Not the A this time, no. Now Andy could identify the handwriting. Black script, and smaller letters than the previous years.

_Andrea_.

*


	2. Chapter 2

_Miranda, I thought we could meet_

_Your gifts_

_I can’t tell you_

Seventeen drafts. Seventeen false starts. Andy made it a sentence or two into each one and gave up. 

She almost called Miranda three separate times over the next two days. Actually almost hit the Send button. Stopped herself each time.

It had been Miranda all this time, and Andy couldn’t handle it. Couldn’t even pull herself together long enough to compose a coherent email to ask _why_. What could Miranda possibly be expecting? What could her motivation be for sending Andy literally thousands of dollars of designer gifts without so much as a signature?

She couldn’t focus on any of her work. On Sunday, the day after her birthday, Trixie asked her about the birthday box. Andy snapped “I don’t want to talk about it” and stomped into her room. And immediately felt guilty, because none of this was Trixie’s fault.

Her phone buzzed with a text. _Maybe it got delayed_ , Trixie had sent, apparently assuming the box hadn’t arrived at all.

Andy sent back _yeah, maybe_ and threw her phone on the floor.

*

Andy was fully aware that what she was about to do was completely insane. She was operating at about four percent of her rational decision-making capacity, and she also did not care one single tiny bit. She didn’t care one single tiny bit because the fact that Miranda had been sending her anonymous, expensive birthday presents was also completely insane, so she figured that turnabout was fair play.

She rented a Zipcar, which she’d never done before (and probably wouldn’t do again—it smelled like stale French fries and body odor), put Miranda’s townhouse address into Google Maps, and started driving. 

Insane. But she was doing it anyway. She felt wired, adrenaline-charged, as though her frontal lobe had totally disconnected from the rest of her brain. She listened to Enya to try and calm down. It didn’t work.

The second assistant usually delivered the Book to Miranda’s house at around nine. Google Maps estimated her arrival time at 8:37pm. She got there at 8:36.

She circled the block. Should she ring the doorbell before the second assistant? No. That was a bad idea. She didn’t want this—whatever _this_ was—to be interrupted by the _dry cleaning_. 

She parked a block away, so she could see Miranda’s front door, and waited. 

There was a light on at the second floor, and another at the fourth. Andy knew that the second floor was the office—the memory of Miranda’s scandalized expression still made her cringe with mortification, even eight years later—but she had no idea what was above that. Miranda’s bedroom? It was possible Miranda wasn’t even home yet. Half the time she’d been out with advertisers or Irv or some celebrity when Andy delivered the Book.

Her thoughts raced. She chewed her thumbnail and tried to breathe.

Eight fifty. Eight fifty-five.

At 9:05, a familiar silver car pulled up to the curb. A dark-haired girl stepped out, clutching the Book to her chest with one hand and hefting a garment bag of dry-cleaning with the other. She stumbled a little going up the townhouse stairs. Andy sympathy-flinched.

The girl unlocked the door and disappeared inside. Andy held her breath. If Miranda wasn’t home, she would be back out in ninety seconds or less. Even if she _was_ home, she might be out in ninety seconds or less. Andy could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times Miranda had spoken to her during the Book delivery.

Andy found herself counting the seconds. At fifty-five, the front door opened again, and the girl hurried back down the stairs into the waiting car.

Andy exhaled in a whoosh. Turned the car back on. She would wait a little longer before she left, because she was _extremely_ nervous, but it was abundantly clear that Miranda probably, most likely, most definitely wasn’t home. Maybe tomorrow—

The second-floor light went out.

Andy’s stomach lurched. She turned the car off again. Then she wound the green scarf around her throat, opened the door, and stepped out.

It was too cold for the Burberry trench, and Andy hadn’t wanted to risk walking in melting slush in the Louboutins, but she’d worn the gloves with her jeans and overcoat. She had briefly considered the dress, but there were limits to her insanity. 

Even without any heels, the walk to Miranda’s front steps took an eternity. By the time she got there, she was shaking.

She put a foot on the first step. _Mistake_. This was a mistake. And yet her feet kept moving.

She’d worn a ballerina-neck black top with the scarf, but she found herself wishing she’d worn the turtleneck. She felt exposed, even with her coat on, as she climbed toward the door. She stood before it, one hand poised at the doorbell. Thought of the unfinished emails, and the three aborted phone calls.

She pressed the button.

For a moment, she thought the door wouldn’t open. Thought that Miranda would simply ignore the sound of the doorbell. It seemed like something she would do.

And then she heard the metallic slide of a chain lock. Of the deadbolt clunking open, and the click of the latch. 

The door opened.

Andy’s first thought was that Miranda looked exactly as she remembered. Her immediate second thought was that Miranda looked absolutely fucking gorgeous. 

“Andrea,” she said, and were it not for the little catch in her voice, the slight flush in her cheeks, Andy would have thought Miranda was utterly unsurprised to see her. “Come in.”

Feeling dazed, Andy stepped into the foyer and closed the door behind her. Pulled off the gloves and stuffed them into her coat pockets.

“I think,” Miranda said quietly, not quite meeting Andy’s gaze, “that this conversation warrants a glass of wine, don’t you?”

“Um.” Andy swallowed hard. “Yeah. Okay.”

She followed Miranda to the kitchen. Slid onto a barstool and watched Miranda’s movements—removing wine glasses from a hanging rack and setting them onto the counter, reaching for a bottle of red. The flex of her wrists as she maneuvered a corkscrew that looked like it had been developed by NASA. Everyday motions made extraordinary by the performer. 

“It should air for a few minutes,” Miranda said as she poured. A third full, Cabernet in a Bordeaux glass, precisely the way it was meant to be served. She slid the glass across the counter to Andy and poured one for herself.

Then moved toward Andy. And sat down on the barstool beside her.

Andy could barely look at her. She focused, instead, on the bracelets on Miranda’s left wrist. On the sleeves that had been pushed up to her elbows. Her nails were pink, flawlessly manicured. 

“The scarf looks lovely,” Miranda said.

Andy’s face burned. “You knew it would.”

“Yes.” Miranda’s hand on the counter moved, incrementally, toward Andy. “You’re still wearing your coat.”

Andy looked down. “Oh.” She unzipped it, pulled it off. The cool air helped. She draped it over the stool on her other side.

There was a long silence, then: “You’re uncomfortable.”

Andy’s eyes snapped up to Miranda’s. “No,” she said quickly. 

The expression on Miranda’s face was so jarringly unfamiliar that Andy almost couldn’t form a follow-up sentence. She was gazing right at Andy, a little crease between her eyebrows, her lips parted _._ She looked— _open_ , somehow. As though Andy’s presence in her kitchen had cracked open the glossy Runway exterior and revealed beneath a woman with very human needs.

“What I mean is,” Andy said, fumbling, “no, I’m not uncomfortable, but—but I mean, Miranda, they were so _expensive—”_

One eyebrow arched, the facade falling back into place. “Be assured that nothing I purchased caused me significant financial strain.”

_Ugh_. The corners of Miranda’s mouth were tight with displeasure. “Okay,” Andy said, taking a deep breath to try to reset. Miranda didn’t want to talk about the money, fine. “Then let me just say—it was very generous of you, Miranda. Thank you.”

But that didn’t seem to help, either. Miranda looked away. “My motivation was not—” she paused—“ _generosity,_ Andrea.” 

Andy toyed with the stem of her wine glass. The question was on the tip of her tongue. One word. One word that she was finding nearly impossible to say.

“Then—” She clenched her jaw and forced it out. “Why?”

Miranda drew a breath in and let it out very slowly. She took a sip of her wine, then another. Andy sat very still, even though she felt like she was going to crawl right out of her skin.

“Aesthetics,” Miranda said at last, and Andy almost fell off her stool.

“ _Miranda,”_ she growled.

Miranda sighed and propped her forehead in one hand. “No,” she said. “I suppose not.”

“And I didn’t come here to say thank you,” Andy said, sharper than she intended.

Another sigh. Miranda slid her hand down to cover her eyes. 

“I found myself,” she said at last, “in a position that—” She broke off. “You made things exceptionally difficult for me, Andrea.”

Andy frowned. “I didn’t come here to say sorry, either.”

“Nor should you,” Miranda said, face still mostly hidden. “The fault was mine.”

“I don’t know what we’re talking about,” Andy said, even though she thought she kind of did. 

“The impact you made—and your departure—” 

Andy cringed. “I take it back. I _am_ sorry about that.”

“It was for the best.” Miranda lifted her head and turned to look at Andy. She looked tired. “The truth is, Andrea, I—felt something. Before you left. And after.”

Andy’s stomach did a cartwheel. “I know,” she said.

Miranda’s eyebrows went up. For a moment, she seemed more startled than vulnerable. “You do?”

“I mean.” Andy tugged at the end of the scarf, letting her gaze drift around the kitchen. “I thought I did. Not at the time. A while after. And I think—it didn’t take me all that long to figure out that these were from you.”

“I suppose,” Miranda said, letting her hands fall to encircle the base of her wine glass, “that it was a way for me to...alleviate...” She paused. “Express, perhaps. Things I felt unable to...or unequipped to say.”

The sheer candor of Miranda’s words was kind of blowing Andy’s mind, and she hadn’t even begun to process their meaning. 

The words were out before she could stop them. “So say them now.”

Miranda paled. She stared at Andy. “Andrea—”

“You made me wonder. Every day for _eight years,_ Miranda. Do you realize how absolutely _nuts_ that is?” Andy pushed her wine away and leaned toward Miranda. That inhibitionless, adrenaline-drunk feeling was back. So much so that she reached out and put a hand on Miranda’s knee.

Miranda started. Looked down at Andy’s hand on her knee, and then back up at Andy. 

“You want to talk about _feelings_ ?” Andy added, emboldened by the fact that Miranda didn’t run screaming from the room. “I can tell you something about _feelings.”_

“We barely know each other,” Miranda said.

“And yet you mailed me lingerie a week ago,” Andy fired back.

Miranda’s face turned bright red. She jerked her knee away.

“Miranda,” Andy said. She put her hand, now, on Miranda’s shoulder. Pulled a little, so Miranda had to face her. She let her tone gentle. “What did you think was going to happen?”

For a moment, it seemed as though the cause was lost. Miranda’s expression was totally closed off, her lips a thin white line. 

“ _Miranda_ ,” Andy said again, pleading now. “Come on.”

The tension in Miranda’s body abruptly released. She let out a breath. “I honestly don’t know,” she said at last.

Andy squeezed Miranda's shoulder and let go. “Well,” she said. “That’s a start.”

  
  
*


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> whoa that escalated quickly

“I admit,” Miranda said quietly, standing and taking a few steps toward the living room, “I didn’t actually think that things would—progress—quite this far.”

Andy got up and followed her. Sat on the couch, despite the fact that Miranda was still standing. Waited. 

“I suppose I thought...it seemed as though the clothes at Runway made you happy.” She was turned almost completely away from Andy now, head tilted slightly back, wine glass cupped between both hands. “And I wanted that. For you.”

Andy’s breath caught. “That wasn’t all, though,” she said.

Miranda closed her eyes for a moment. “No,” she said. “No, it wasn’t.”

“You liked it,” Andy said, and she saw Miranda’s quick intake of breath. Saw the flush that was just starting to fade from her cheeks return in full force. “You liked thinking of me in something of yours.”

Faintly now. “Yes.”

A low throb, hot and insistent, was starting between Andy’s thighs. She put her wine glass on the end table. “You _liked_ that I didn’t know it was you.”

She saw Miranda’s hands tighten on the wine glass. And was suddenly absolutely certain that Miranda had gotten off on those gifts just as much as Andy had.

She stood up slowly. Moved toward Miranda. In her bare feet, Miranda seemed much smaller. 

Andy reached around Miranda and gently took the glass out of her hand. Placed it carefully on the end table beside her own. Miranda hadn’t turned around, but she hadn’t turned further away from Andy, either.

Andy stepped into Miranda’s space, and Miranda didn’t move away.

She was six inches from Miranda now. Could feel heat radiating off her body. She raised a hand, let it hover at Miranda’s elbow. 

Miranda’s breathing was uneven, shallow. She stood absolutely still.

Andy put her hand on Miranda’s arm.

Miranda’s soft gasp sent bolts of electricity through Andy’s entire body. Andy stepped closer. “I imagined it was you,” she murmured, her lips brushing the shell of Miranda’s ear. “I wanted it to be you.”

Goosebumps, now, on the back of Miranda’s neck. 

“You could have asked me, in Paris,” Andy whispered. “I would have said yes.”

Sudden movement. Miranda was turning. Hands coming up to either side of Andy’s face. Eyes ablaze.

“You—” she gritted out, and then her mouth was on Andy’s.

The shock of it almost threw Andy off her game completely, but she rallied fast and caught the kiss. If Miranda noticed Andy’s surprise, she didn’t seem to mind. She kissed hard, almost desperately, and when Andy felt the hot press of a searching tongue on her lips, she opened her mouth and let Miranda lick her way in.

She found Miranda’s waist. Yanked her closer, working one hand beneath her shirt to slide over the hot smooth skin of her back. Miranda moaned, and Andy nearly passed out from desire.

“You wanted to—what—” she gasped into Miranda’s throat, teeth scraping Miranda’s jaw—“own me? You did that without even trying.” 

“ _No_ .” Miranda’s hand curled into her hair. “Not—not that. I wanted you to—you didn’t _need_ anyone, Andrea—” 

“I thought of you _anyway.”_ Andy caught Miranda’s face between her hands and looked her straight in the eye. Miranda’s pupils were dilated, her face flushed. She was breathing hard. “I thought of you _all the time_ , Miranda.”

She ought to have known that there was no purer aphrodisiac on Earth to Miranda Priestly than those very words. Miranda made a sound that was practically a growl and yanked Andy down to kiss her again. And pushed Andy, walking her backward until Andy’s calves hit the couch and she sat down hard. 

She found herself, suddenly, with a lapful of Miranda. Knees splayed on either side of her thighs. Hands braced on the couch behind her. And kissing her as though it was the last thing she was going to do in her life. 

Ninety-six percent of Andy—the ninety-six percent that had been driving the entire evening’s endeavor—was all-in, ready to dive into whatever _this_ was, this incredibly hot, incredibly hedonistic romp on Miranda’s couch. 

Unfortunately, the four percent that was still rational was screaming at her to _pump the fucking brakes already_. 

“Miranda,” she said, pulling back.

Miranda’s groan was half desire, half annoyance. “Don’t tell me you’re having second thoughts _now_.”

_“No_.” Andy slipped a hand over the back of Miranda’s neck and pulled her close enough to lick the hollow of her collarbone, earning a soft whimper for the effort. “Just. Something to look forward to. For next time.” 

Miranda shifted, half-rolled, sat down beside her. She didn’t look at Andy, and if she was at _all_ embarrassed Andy was going to hate herself forever.

Tension in her jaw and neck. Andy could see it, and leaned over to kiss where the muscles were tight. 

“Besides,” she added in a low, teasing voice, “I might want a new dress by then. Or, you know. Something nice to match the lingerie.” 

Miranda pulled away from Andy’s wandering lips and faced her, eyes burning. “I will buy you,” she said, her voice as low as Andy’s, “whatever you desire.”

Andy got up. Reached down, and pulled Miranda to her feet. “I’m going to go,” she said, “because it’s late, and it’s a weekday, but next time—” She brought her lips close to Miranda’s ear. Gently caught the lobe between her teeth, hearing Miranda’s hiss of breath when she did it. “Next time, I’m going to show you _exactly_ what I desire.”

Miranda’s fingers bit into her hip. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep,” she warned.

Andy met her eyes. “Never have,” she said, “never will.”

She walked backward, kissing Miranda all the way to the door. “Night,” she said, once she was on the front step, and she finally let herself grin.

“You certainly look pleased with yourself.” Miranda leaned on the doorjamb, her lips tight at the corners, as though she was trying not to smile.

Andy gave her a little shrug. “Turns out I like you messy,” she said, reaching out to touch Miranda’s tousled hair. “See you, Miranda.”

Miranda rolled her eyes. “Good night, Andrea,” she said.

*


	4. Chapter 4

“Guy here for you,” Walt said.

Andy looked up from her computer. Standing behind Walt was a young man in a khaki uniform. An orange logo— _NY Minute Messaging—_ was embroidered on his breast pocket. 

“Oh.” Andy frowned, puzzled. “Sure. Thanks.”

Walt cracked his gum and wandered away. 

The courier held up a small box. “Andrea Sachs?” 

He said her name as it was intended to be: with a long, nasal _A_ , and it actually made her flinch. “Yeah.” 

He set the box on her desk and held out his tablet. “Sign here.”

Trixie was watching with interest. “Is that it?” she said after he’d left, scooting her desk chair toward Andy’s.

“Um,” Andy said, turning the box over in her hands. “No.”

Trixie’s eyes narrowed. “You’re not telling me something.” 

Andy grimaced. “No,” she said again.

“Liar!” Trixie pointed accusingly at Andy. “You are _such_ a bad liar. You opened it without me, didn’t you? I knew it! What was it?”

Andy felt a blush climbing up her throat. She gulped.

Trixie’s eyes went wide. “What happened.”

Andy looked at the little box, then back at Trixie. “It—it’s Miranda,” she said.

Trixie stared. She opened her mouth, then closed it again. 

“I—” she started, and stopped. “ _What_?”

Andy made a face. “You heard me.”

_“Miranda_?” Trixie pointed at the box. “Miranda—that? Also?”

“I think so.”

This time, Trixie just left her mouth open. When it became clear she wasn’t going to be able to formulate any additional sentences, Andy set about opening the little box. She couldn’t imagine what Miranda would have had time to buy in the past twelve hours, but—

Inside the box was a pair of small drop earrings. Aquamarine, her birthstone, haloed by tiny stones that Andy was pretty sure were diamonds. A tiny ribbon beside the earrings read _Albertsons Estate Jewelry_. 

And there was a note. _Friday. Roy will pick you up at four. -M_

“Jesus Christ,” Trixie said at her shoulder, and Andy jumped and looked up at her. The shock on Trixie’s face had been replaced by a knowing expression.

“What?” Andy said.

Trixie quirked an eyebrow.

“My friend,” she said, “you’re being wooed.”

*

She didn’t know how to respond to the earrings. Should she call? She couldn’t just continue to show up at Miranda’s house. 

She decided on a photo. In her room that evening, she stripped off her shirt and bra, put the earrings on, and took a selfie. Then she close-cropped it so all that was visible was one earring, her throat, and her bare shoulder. Put a couple filters on it, and it looked, Andy thought, pretty darn good. 

Thirty seconds after she sent the photo to Miranda, her phone rang. She answered. “Hi, Miranda.” 

Miranda’s voice was low and tight. “Come over,” she said.

Andy was very, very glad Miranda couldn’t see how widely she was grinning. 

“Friday,” said primly, “is only two days away.”

Miranda made a frustrated little noise, and abruptly the call ended.

*

By Friday, Andy was antsy and anxious. The weather was still unseasonably cold, and in anticipation of whatever Miranda had planned, she had worn the turtleneck, the earrings, and the boots. She was standing outside of the Cellular Function office at three-fifty-five, pulling her coat closer around herself and wishing she’d worn a hat. 

At three-fifty-eight, the silver town car pulled up to the curb. Roy hopped out. “Hey, Andy,” he said, opening the door for her. “Long time no see.”

The car was empty. “Sorry you had to come all the way to Queens,” Andy said. 

“Naw. Nothing to it.” Roy smiled at her in the rearview mirror. “Happy to.”

She’d always liked Roy, and it was as though no time at all had passed. He told her stories about his daughter—now fourteen—and she gave him the pared-down version of the last eight years. She knew better than to ask where they were going. 

Still, her stomach flipped when they pulled up to the Versace boutique on Fifth Avenue. 

“Um.” She looked at Roy. “I’m meeting her here, or...?” 

He smiled, shrugged. “She’s inside,” he said. “See you in a bit, Andy.”

A bit. Sure.

Ten feet from the store, and the door opened. A young woman dressed all in black stepped out. “Andrea?”

“Um.” Andy idiotically looked behind her, as though there was some other Andrea expected at Versace. “Yeah. That’s me.”

The young woman smiled. “Come with me.”

Andy followed her into the store. Rich carpet and gleaming hardwood, a few pieces on each shelf. She hadn’t been in a place like this since she left Runway. 

The elevator took them to the fifth floor. Andy thought she was looking at someone’s extremely expensive apartment. Art on the walls, more hardwood. And MIranda, somehow managing to look poised and stiff on the deepest, cushiest looking couch Andy had ever seen in her life.

She rose. “Andrea.”

The sound of her name, almost a purr. Like honey and wine in Miranda’s mouth. She quaked. 

“Miranda,” she managed to squeak. 

For all her confidence sending the photo, and refusing Miranda’s order to come over on Wednesday evening, she suddenly found herself flustered. Miranda was looking at her as though she was starving and Andy was a steak. 

A hot rush of desire loosened her limbs. She wasn’t sure what to do—embrace Miranda? Air-kiss her cheek? 

But Miranda was already moving, gesturing at the two additional people who had materialized in the back of the room. “Charles, Kimberly. What we discussed, please.”

She was suddenly presented with dresses. Not dresses— _gowns,_ at least eight of them, rolled out on a gold rack that looked as though it cost as much as a car. 

Miranda glanced over them, lips pursed slightly, while Kimberly and Charles hovered nervously at her elbow. Then: “That will be all,” and they were gone, disappearing through the door in the back and leaving Andy and Miranda alone.

Andy didn’t move. Didn’t even look at the clothing. “Miranda?” 

Miranda’s cheeks were pink. She didn’t quite meet Andy’s gaze. “I would like to buy you a dress.”

Andy felt her breathing pick up. “You already bought me a dress,” she pointed out.

Miranda’s lashes lowered, slowly, and when they lifted again she looked straight at Andy. “I don’t believe,” she said, enunciating every word in a low voice, “that I said anything about what _you_ would like.”

If it had been literally anyone else, the words would have rankled. But from Miranda it was like heat on butter, and Andy melted. 

Miranda didn’t have to _buy_ anything. People threw couture at her, and at Runway, like confetti at a birthday party. The very fact that she was here with Andy, about to spend four thousand dollars or whatever on a gown that she knew very well Andy had no place to wear, was enough to make Andy’s head spin.

She didn’t understand it. But if it meant that Miranda would keep looking at her like that, she was fucking thrilled to acquiesce. 

Andy looked around for someplace to change. There were no other doors. It struck Andy that this _was_ the dressing room. And Miranda was watching her, eyes like coals, one hand on the rack of gowns. She made no move to either leave the room or turn around.

_Well_.

Andy held her gaze as she pulled off the boots and socks. As she reached for the hem of the turtleneck and drew it up and over her head. 

She heard Miranda’s soft hitch of breath from beneath the cream cashmere. The sweater caught for a moment on her left earring and she silently cursed, because leave it to her to ruin a Versace striptease with a jewelry malfunction. Blessedly, though, the earring snapped free, and she pulled the sweater the rest of the way off. She raked a hand through her hair in an attempt to push it back into place. 

Miranda stood like a stone. The only evidence that Andy had had any effect on her at all was the way her grip tightened on the metal bar of the dress rack. 

She brought her hands to the button of her jeans. Miranda wasn’t standing close enough for Andy to be able to tell for sure, but she could almost swear that Miranda’s pupils dilated. 

She undid the button. Drew the zipper down slowly.

Miranda’s breath caught. Her lips parted. She made a movement, tiny, as though she wanted to let go of the clothing rack and step toward Andy.

Andy’s body thrummed. She was flooding. It’d be a miracle if she didn’t ruin these zillion dollar dresses. She slid her thumbs beneath the waist of her jeans, bit her lip, pushed them down. 

She didn’t know how taking off jeans could possibly look anything but awkward, but the look on Miranda’s face told her otherwise. Andy could see, now, that she was breathing a little harder. That the flush in her cheeks had deepened.

She stood before Miranda in an ivory bralette and black lace underwear that she was pretty sure were already soaked. Her whole body felt like a sunburn. 

“All yours,” she managed to say. 

Miranda swallowed, and the soft sound in the quiet room made Andy feel like she might actually faint. She watched Miranda lift a floor-length gown from its hanger, unzipping it as she came toward Andy. 

“Turn,” Miranda said, and Andy was slightly gratified to hear that Miranda’s voice sounded as strained as her own. 

Andy turned. She heard the rustle of fabric, then Miranda’s voice again, quiet. “Here.”

She lifted her arms and the dress was lowered gently over them. She felt Miranda’s hands near her ribs, tugging the fabric down over her head and into place. Then again at her back, holding the dress closed, pulling the zipper up. She wasn’t a four these days, but the dress fit like a glove. Like a leather glove, say, maybe a Gucci one. 

She looked up. Met Miranda’s eyes in the three-way mirror before her. 

No one in Andy’s entire life had ever looked at Andy like that. It wasn’t just lust. It wasn’t even desire. Miranda was looking at Andy as though no other woman on the planet had ever even existed. At that moment, Andy thought she would do about anything to keep that expression on Miranda’s face.

“How does it look?” she said.

Miranda’s gaze traveled down, slowly, and then up again. Her fingertips rested lightly at Andy’s waist, hot through the fabric of the dress. 

“Lovely,” she said at last. Andy saw her take a deep breath. Saw a little shift in her expression. “But,” she added, “not the one I want for you.”

Her hands went to the zipper, and Andy felt cool air on her back as Miranda drew it down. She moved to take the dress off, but Miranda put a hand on her arm.

“Let me,” she said.

Andy was going to combust. She was actually going to burst into flames. Miranda’s hands brushed here, there, as she pulled the dress over Andy’s head and away.

Three dresses. Four. By the fifth, Andy was shaking, and Miranda was being anything but utilitarian in her touches. She took off the final dress and draped it over the couch. Her palms skimmed up Andy’s bared sides.

“This is the one,” she murmured into Andy’s ear. 

“How private is this dressing room?” Andy tipped her head against Miranda’s and closed her eyes.

The hands on Andy’s sides tightened. “Not that private.” And then she let go.

Andy stood there, eyes still closed. She heard Miranda moving behind her. Putting the gown back on its hanger, maybe, or collecting Andy’s clothes.

“I keep the scarf next to my bed,” Andy said, and she heard the movement behind her abruptly stop.

Footsteps moving toward her. She didn’t open her eyes. Miranda’s voice, low.

“Tell me.”

“I kept it in my closet for a long time,” Andy said, and even though she was mostly undressed practically in public, she felt strangely unexposed. “And then—and then when I let myself hope it was you—I moved it to my nightstand.” 

Quickening of Miranda’s breath. Andy kept talking. 

“I would wear it—wrap myself in it, sometimes—when I—” She felt herself blushing, but she wanted Miranda to hear. Wanted her to know, and be affected, and keep looking at Andy with that fire in her eyes. “And the dress, too. I thought of you. Imagined you taking it off me.”

“ _Ah.”_ Soft exhalation behind her, not quite a moan. 

“I thought about—” Pulsing between her legs. She shifted, feeling slick heat on her inner thighs. “I thought about your hands. On all those scarves. Picking one—picking that one for me.”

She was moving closer. Andy felt her at her back, not quite close enough to touch. “I thought about your shoulders.” She was whispering now, incoherent with want. “You have such gorgeous shoulders, Miranda—”

A strangled little sound, and Miranda’s hands were on her waist. Wrapping around her. Pulling her backwards. She felt Miranda’s lips on her throat.

_This_. She was addicted already, craving like air the moment when Miranda’s tight control fell away. She did open her eyes then, looking at their reflections in the mirror. Miranda’s hands sliding over her stomach, her breasts. The part of her snowy hair as she scraped her teeth over the angle of Andy’s jaw. Clutching. Desperate. 

“I thought you said this wasn’t private,” Andy managed to say.

Miranda’s hands stilled, then fell away. She was breathing hard. 

“No,” she said. “You’re right.”

She was flushed and disheveled, her expression something very near bewilderment. Her eyeliner was smudged near her left eye. 

Andy turned. Took a step toward her. Slowly, deliberately, raised a hand and pressed the pad of her thumb against the smeared makeup.

“Here,” she said, and wiped it away. She leaned forward to press her lips almost chastely against Miranda’s.

“Buy me that dress,” she murmured into Miranda’s mouth, “and then take me home.”

*


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> my fellow horny bastards, here you go. three thousand words of smut. this has completely devolved and im not sorry

You wouldn’t know, to look at her in the town car, that she’d been gasping against Andy’s lips only ten minutes prior. Every silver lock was smoothed back into place; every hemline was arrow-straight and crisp. She’d put on her sunglasses before summoning Charles and Kimberly back to the dressing room. 

Andy, on the other hand, felt like she’d been skinny-dipping in a live volcano. She tried in vain to get her hair to behave, but succeeded only in making it stick out more. Flushed face, glassy eyes, rumpled clothes and hair—she looked exactly like someone who’d very recently been wildly making out in a boutique dressing room.

She didn’t see Miranda buy the dress. One second, Miranda was pointing to the one she’d selected; the next, they were walking out the door empty-handed. Miranda had a _personal Versace account_. She’d probably find the gown in her bedroom the next morning.

“Find one?” Roy asked, as Miranda slid into the car.

Andy choked a little. “Yep.”

“Home?”

“Mine,” Miranda said smoothly. 

Miranda barely looked at her the entire car ride. When they arrived at Miranda’s house, she got out of the car without looking back. As though she didn’t care at all whether or not Andy followed her. Andy knew better.

She closed the townhouse door and locked it. Leaned against it. Waited as Miranda dropped her Birkin bag on the sideboard and shrugged out of her coat.

Miranda was good at a lot of things, but transitions and emotions were not among them. Andy watched her pull off one heel, then the other.

“So should I Uber home, or...?” She let the question hang.

Miranda’s head jerked up. Her eyes flashed. “I hope you’re joking,” she said.

That was more like it. Andy grinned. “Yeah,” she said. “Of course.” She pushed off the door, shed her layers of outerwear, and sat down on the steps to remove her boots.

“You need a coat,” Miranda said, watching her. 

Andy looked up. “Right there,” she said, pointing. “It’s fine.”

“It’s insufficient in both form and function,” Miranda said. “You’re cold.”

Andy stood and draped her arms over Miranda’s shoulders, twining her fingers through Miranda’s hair. “Well,” she said. “Why don’t you warm me up.”

Miranda closed her eyes for a moment. “Why do you say things like that?” But she put her hands on Andy’s hips. 

“Dunno.” Andy leaned forward to brush her lips against Miranda’s. “To get you to make that face, probably. Or because you’d have hated it when I worked for you.”

“I should have fired you.” Miranda closed her eyes and let Andy gently tug her head back. “Or never hired you to begin with.”

“Mean,” Andy said into Miranda’s throat. 

“I’ve been called worse.” Punctuated by a little moan as Andy’s tongue found the hollow beneath Miranda’s jaw.

“You bought me a Versace.” Andy brought her hands to the buttons of Miranda’s blouse. “I suppose that counts for something.”

“You looked— _ah—_ exquisite.” 

“Sounds like a line.” She followed her hands with her lips. 

Miranda was gasping now, her nails biting into Andy’s lower back, pulling her closer. “I’m offended,” she managed to say, “at the implication.”

“I’ll make it up to you,” Andy hummed, and pushed the blouse away.

There was something to be said, Andy thought, for exorbitantly expensive bras. For one, they looked fucking magnificent on Miranda Priestly. The swell of her breasts, pale and lovely in pink lace, was the stuff of poetry. Andy could have composed a sonnet on the spot. 

Miranda started to reach behind her, to unhook the bra herself. Andy stopped her. “Don’t,” she said. “I want to look at you.”

Miranda flushed, and Andy abruptly wondered: had Miranda felt admired? Andy had spent all these years feeling watched—feeling _worshiped,_ with the increasingly extravagant gifts—but when was the last time Miranda had felt the same?

She paused. “It occurs to me that I have no idea where your bedroom is.”

“Presumptuous,” Miranda murmured, but there was a faint smile on her lips. 

“I mean, we could play Scrabble.” Andy tried to suppress her grin.

Miranda rolled her eyes heavenward. “ _Andrea._ ”

“Yeah, well.” Andy stepped back and took Miranda’s hand. “Then take me to bed already.”

Miranda led and Andy followed and she thought she had won the karmic jackpot, somehow. She watched the slight flex of muscle on either side of Miranda’s spine, of her shoulder blades shifting as she pulled Andy up the stairs. Like Helen of fucking Troy. She suddenly understood a lot more about the Spartans.

Second floor, then third, then fourth. Miranda switched on a lamp as they entered the room.

“Pretty lousy digs,” Andy said, taking Miranda by the waist and pulling her backwards. She slid one hand over Miranda’s stomach, pressed the other to her collarbone. “I can’t believe you live like this.”

Miranda sniffed. “That Uber is still an option.” And gasped softly when Andy’s hand dipped deftly beneath the waistband of her skirt.

“Sure about that?” Andy breathed into her ear.

Miranda turned in her arms, looking as though she wanted to say something else—to get the last word in, how typically Miranda—but Andy kissed her before she got the chance. 

Miranda murmured when Andy’s lips hit hers, a soft sound of pleasure that made Andy go weak at the knees. She took Andy’s hands in hers and walked her backwards, still kissing her, until they got to the enormous bed.

“Earrings on,” she said, reaching up to catch Andy’s earlobe gently between her thumb and forefinger, “and nothing else.” 

“Anything you want,” Andy said, and pulled off her sweater. 

She’d already done a slow strip once today, and besides, she was beginning to feel as though she might actually die if she didn’t get full-body contact with Miranda, so she yanked her jeans off and kicked them aside with about as much refinement as a frat boy on a Saturday night. Miranda didn’t seem to mind; she was watching Andy’s movements with a ravenous expression.

“This too?” Andy hooked one thumb through the strap of her bra, then tipped her head down and looked at Miranda through her eyelashes.

Miranda slid both hands up Andy’s sides and slipped them beneath the elastic of the bralette. Carefully peeled it up, just as she’d lifted the Versace gowns from Andy’s body. Then she tossed it aside, pulled Andy toward her, and kissed her. 

The feeling of Miranda’s breasts, hot and smooth against her own, and the gentle scrape of the pink lace against her nipples—it was enough to make Andy’s knees stop functioning altogether. She dropped onto the bed, pulling Miranda on top of her.

“Oof.” Miranda braced herself against Andy’s shoulder to keep from tipping over. “Very graceful.”

“I literally could not help it,” Andy said, letting herself fall backwards and sliding her hands up Miranda’s thighs. “You’re too hot. My legs stopped working.”

“ _Honestly_ ,” Miranda said, and Andy thought she was trying to sound annoyed, but that little smile was back. 

Everyone at Runway was too terrified of Miranda to give her compliments. Everyone who wanted to be associated with Runway had ulterior motives for giving Miranda compliments. Andy made a mental note to tell Miranda, frequently and enthusiastically, exactly how incredible she was. 

“Can I—” Andy reached up, trying to find the zipper at Miranda’s waist. 

Miranda wasn’t that patient. She stood up, unzipped the skirt herself, and let it fall. The lamp illuminated every curve in warm golden light, sent each valley into shadow. 

Andy scooted backward and put her hands behind her head, “You look like a Vermeer.”

Miranda actually _snorted,_ which Andy found almost impossibly charming. “You were saying something about a line?” she said, and climbed onto the bed.

“Worked, didn’t it?” Andy said, and then she couldn’t say anything more, because Miranda’s mouth was on hers.

Miranda kissed like she did everything else in her life—with full tilt, balls-to-the-wall, get-out-of-my-fucking-way intensity. She supported her weight with one hand, and Andy felt the other moving over every inch of her torso. After a moment, Andy pulled away.

“Miranda,” she gasped, “if you keep it up like that, I think you might have an—abbreviated experience.” Because she was about six seconds away from coming, and Miranda hadn’t even completely disrobed.

Miranda’s lips didn’t curve a single millimeter, but Andy saw the corners of her eyes crease, just a little.

“That’s a risk I’m willing to take,” she said primly, and went right back to what she’d been doing. When she dragged her tongue down Andy’s throat, Andy blacked out for a moment. 

“Jesus— _Miranda—”_

She could have sworn she heard Miranda actually _purr_. 

Hands on her thighs, now, sliding down and up again, and this time hooking around the waistband of her underwear. She lifted her hips and let Miranda pull them off. At the same time, Miranda’s mouth closed around her left nipple. Hot and wet, gentle suction; it sent a bright burst of pleasure straight to Andy’s clit. She groaned, arching into Miranda’s mouth. Rocked her hips up, trying in vain to find some friction. 

Miranda pulled back long enough to murmur “ _Wait_ ,” and then went back to tonguing Andy’s breasts until her entire body was an ache of pleasure. 

“If I die in this bed,” Andy gritted out, feeling Miranda’s lips moving down her stomach, “know that it was entirely your fault.”

A low chuckle. “ _Mea culpa_ ,” Miranda said into Andy’s right hip, and abruptly her mouth was on Andy’s clit. 

If Andy had been even a little less turned on, she might have noticed that Miranda’s motions were not quite practiced. Might have noticed that she hesitated at times, as though she was slightly uncertain about what to do next. But Andy had been on the verge of orgasm basically since walking into the Versace store, so it took only about twelve laps of Miranda’s tongue before she curled her hands into the sheets and arched off the bed. 

“ _Mir—”_ she gritted out, and rocked her hips up so hard that she thought, dimly, _I hope I didn’t just break her nose_. And then her brain whited out altogether.

When she came back to herself, pulsing and gasping, Miranda was propped between her thighs wearing the most singularly self-satisfied smirk Andy had ever seen in her life. 

“Passable first attempt,” she said, and Andy cracked up.

“Yeah,” she said between breathless giggles. “Yeah, I’d say you scaled that learning curve pretty quickly, Miranda.”

She saw Miranda glance quickly down and then back up, and could tell that she was not entirely certain what to do next. “Come here,” Andy said, and reached down to haul Miranda toward her by the upper arms. 

She kissed Miranda once, firmly, because her first girlfriend had been squeamish about kissing after sex and she never, ever wanted Miranda to feel the way she’d felt when Kaitlyn turned her face away. Then she said, “I think I remember something about telling you exactly what I want.”

Miranda hissed a soft inhale. “I believe you mentioned that, yes.”

Andy pushed Miranda’s shoulder, gently, until Miranda was flat on her back on the bed. Then she stretched out next to her. Pressed her body full-length against Miranda’s. 

“I wasn’t kidding,” she murmured into Miranda’s ear, trailing her hand from sternum to belly button and back up again, “when I said I used to think about your shoulders.” 

Miranda was silent beside her, breath uneven. No movement except for the slight quiver of her muscles beneath Andy’s palm. 

“All the times I could have touched you,” Andy said, “all the times I was close enough to push you into a corner—you’re art, Miranda. Every inch of you.” Her fingertips brushed Miranda’s nipple, lightly through the lace of her bra, and Miranda’s breath caught. 

“I imagined what it would have been like in Paris.” Lips on Miranda’s collarbone now, as she stroked Miranda’s nipple to a hard peak. “If I hadn’t left. If I had followed you that night—up against the hotel door, maybe, or on the couch—”

She thought of Miranda on that couch, gray-voiced and tired, asshole Stephen making her life a misery. She wanted to give her a better memory than that, even if it had never actually happened.

“Kissing your shoulders—” and she did, rolling Miranda toward her just enough to unhook the pink bra with one hand. She pulled it off and flung it. 

Oh, that she could capture this moment in her mind forever. Miranda arched and moaning, pale breasts lit with gold. Skin as soft as velvet. “All I wanted,” Andy whispered into Miranda’s ear, tilting her head just a little so she could watch her hand slip beneath the waistband of Miranda’s underwear, “was to see you. _All_ of you.”

Her fingers slipped against damp curls and swollen flesh. 

“ _Ahh—”_ Miranda’s hips tilted up, her thighs parting. She hissed into Andy’s neck, one hand coming up to grip Andy’s shoulder like a vise.

Gentle strokes, slow, and Andy kept talking. “I thought about how you would taste—on top of that mink you were wearing—I wanted you to think about my mouth on you every time you touched it.”

Miranda was moaning steadily now, low and desperate, body rippling pale and lovely against Andy’s. Andy could feel her start to tense and slowed her hand.

“Oh—” Miranda’s hand on her shoulder tightened and she made a small, frustrated sound. 

“What was it you said?” Andy murmured. “Wait?”

“ _Andrea,”_ Miranda said, and she probably meant it to sound exasperated, but it came out pleading, and Andy couldn’t take it. She snagged the pink lace at Miranda’s hips and dragged the underwear off, then knelt for a moment and just gazed at her. She’d spent so long—years, now—relying on memory and paparazzi photos. It felt incredibly indulgent to be able to _look_.

Miranda shifted, made an impatient little noise. “Andrea,” she said again, opening her eyes. 

Andy looked from Miranda’s expectant expression to the tufted linen headboard and back again. Well. She _had_ promised she’d tell Miranda exactly what she wanted. 

“Surely,” she said, “this headboard isn’t just decorative.”

It took a moment, and when Miranda realized what she meant, she flushed deep red. 

“I don’t think—” she started, and broke off. “That is, I haven’t—”

_Oh_ . Andy wasn’t what anyone would call _adventurous_ , but your basic face-sit was pretty vanilla, wasn’t it? “It’s okay,” she said quickly, “we don’t have to—”

But Miranda was Miranda, and she recovered quickly. “Some help with positioning, I think,” she said smoothly, sitting up, “and I’m fairly certain the rest will be easy to figure out.”

Andy laughed. “Yeah,” she said. “I think that’s generally how it goes.” She reached for a pillow and stretched out in the middle of the bed. 

“Here,” she said, as Miranda got to her knees, holding onto the headboard for balance. She guided one leg over her head.

“Not particularly dignified,” Miranda observed, looking down at her.

“Depends on your definition,” Andy said. She was already aching again. She turned and lapped at Miranda’s thigh.

“ _Oh_.” Miranda stiffened, clutched at the headboard. 

If Andy was dreaming, she didn’t want to wake up. Miranda closed her eyes, her hips moving gently, her muscles shaking. Andy kept her own eyes open. She wanted to memorize every moment of this, every sensation, every taste. Miranda’s skin was soft beneath her tongue, delicate. Darkening to a flush as Andy moved toward her swollen labia. She was so wet that Andy could feel it on her chin and neck, and she hadn’t even really gotten started. 

“Oh,” Miranda said again, and she sounded almost stunned, now. _“_ Oh. _Andrea—”_

_Steady on, Sachs_ , Andy told herself sternly, because if she dove in like she wanted to, Miranda might actually fly off the bed. Instead, she placed a soft, open mouth around Miranda’s entire vulva.

Miranda almost flew off the bed anyway. She curled her body, every limb tightening. Bucked her hips down into Andy’s mouth so hard Andy had to quickly tighten her upper lip to prevent unwanted contact with her teeth. And the _sound_ she made—

Andy moved her tongue, and Miranda made the sound again, and then Andy was basically just trying to keep up as Miranda rocked and moaned and shook above her. She reached down and found her own clit and rubbed herself off helplessly to two more orgasms as Miranda came once, twice, three times. 

After the third, Miranda jerked away, gasping. She put her forehead on the headboard. 

“Okay?” Andy said.

Miranda opened one eye. She was breathing so hard she looked as though she’d been doing wind sprints. 

“Yes,” she said, “although—” She hoisted one leg and swung it over Andy, wincing as she lowered herself down. “I didn’t quite expect to need this degree of hip flexibility.” 

Andy laughed. “I’ll use two pillows next time.” She rolled off the bed and darted into the bathroom to wash her face and rinse out her mouth.

When she returned, Miranda had an odd look on her face. “You don’t have to do that,” she said, as Andy climbed back into bed.

Andy shrugged and brushed a stray white curl back from Miranda’s forehead, then bent to kiss her lightly. “I don’t want to do anything that makes you, I don’t know. Uncomfortable.”

The odd look didn’t go away. If anything, it got more intense. A small crease appeared between Miranda’s eyebrows. “I am not so...squeamish, Andrea.” She reached over and lightly ran her thumb over Andy’s lower lip. “Particularly when it comes to you.”

When Andy decided to jump into bed with Miranda Priestly, she hadn’t been expecting to be on the receiving end of an emotional sucker-punch. She blinked hard. “Um,” she said. “Thanks.”

Miranda leaned forward and kissed her. Not like the kisses from earlier. Softer now, gentle, and the burning behind Andy’s eyelids got worse. Miranda, it turned out, was a _very_ good kisser.

And then she was pulling back, looking straight into Andy’s eyes. 

“You should not be possible,” she said softly.

Andy could have gone for levity. Could have laughed, and turned Miranda’s words into a reflective compliment, had her entire vocabulary not completely vanished. 

“I hope you’ll stay,” Miranda said then, and thank God she had, because Andy was about a nanosecond from declaring undying love. Her brain clicked back on. 

“Mm,” Andy replied, rolling away and pretending to mull it over. “For the price of a coat, maybe. I could use a car.” She grinned, peeked at Miranda out of the corner of her eye. 

Miranda was gazing at her. She didn’t smile back. 

“I’m kidding,” Andy said quickly.

Miranda’s lips curved, just a little. Her eyes flashed.

“I’m not,” she said.

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> now go cool off you thirsty little monsters
> 
> I love you all


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ya gotta have some aftercare and feelings!
> 
> REAL TALK, MY DUDES: this chapter contains mention of past domestic violence (not graphic), and of alcoholism. I am a former long-term partner of an alcoholic, and even after more than 10 years, it takes VERY little to send me back to a bad headspace. The only reason this story here doesn't do it is because 1) I wrote it and 2) I put a little of my own experience in it, so it's sort of therapeutic for me. If you at all are bothered by either of these topics, please take care of yourself and skip this chapter. (There are no naughty bits in it anyway.)

It was barely eight o’clock—far too early to go to sleep, and besides, Andy was banking on a quick rally from Miranda and another go-round before bed. “I’m starving,” she announced.

Miranda propped her head on one hand and watched Andy bounce up. “I can order something.”

“What are the chances the twins will come home? Do I need to cover up? Or hide?”

“Slim to none,” Miranda said. “Caroline has an exhibition next weekend. I haven’t a clue what Cassidy is doing, but it apparently involves spending the night at the lab.”

“Do they live together?” Andy bent to peer at two framed photos on Miranda’s vanity. Black-and-white images, one of each twin. High school senior photos as shot by Annie Leibovitz. 

Miranda rolled her eyes. “No,” she said, “though not for lack of trying. They insisted they needed their own space. Tisch isn’t close to Columbia, in any case. I thought you said you were hungry.”

“Yeah. I can just have some popcorn or something.” 

Miranda looked at her as though she’d just proposed a brief dive into the nearest dumpster. “Please,” she said, aggrieved. She reached for her phone.

“Pizza?” Andy suggested brightly. 

Miranda didn’t even acknowledge that.

*

Roy ended up retrieving L’Artusi. Miranda roundly rejected Andy’s plan to eat gnocchi in bed, so they ended up at the kitchen counter in bathrobes.

“This is too hot,” Andy said, shrugging out of the sleeves.

Miranda gave her a long, long look, then speared a slice of sun-dried tomato and held it to Andy’s lips.

Andy ate it and grinned. 

“Naked at Miranda Priestly’s kitchen table,” she said. “Who needs a car?”

*

Andy was way too full of pasta for more sex. They did it anyway. 

*

“Tell me about that boyfriend,” Miranda said, out of nowhere.

Andy started. She’d been lying with her head on Miranda’s shoulder, one arm draped across Miranda’s stomach. So comfortable that she had almost drifted off to sleep. Clearly, Miranda had not. 

“Um,” Andy said. “What do you want to know?” 

She’d been asked before. Mostly it was a pretext, a way to ask _When did you know_ and _How did it start_. She hadn’t expected it from Miranda.

“When did you end it with him?”

Miranda was looking straight up at the ceiling. Her arm was around Andy’s shoulder, her fingertips lightly stroking Andy’s temple. 

“About a year after we moved to Boston,” Andy said. 

“Did you leave him for someone else?” Still stroking, and Miranda’s voice was even, calm. As though she was asking Andy whether she’d enjoyed the gnocchi.

“No.” Andy moved her hand, pressing her palm to Miranda’s sternum and splaying her fingers. “There was a girl. I never even talked to her. But I realized I didn’t want him.”

“You found someone in Ohio.” Not a question.

Kaitlyn, red-haired and brilliant. “Yes.” 

“Mm.” Miranda’s fingers stopped their movement for a moment, then resumed. “Was she good to you?”

“Sometimes.” Andy was starting to feel—not sleepy, exactly, but a little disassociated. Miranda’s voice was as calm as a hypnotist’s, each question asked at exactly the same cadence as the last. 

She felt Miranda tense at her answer. “Sometimes?” 

A little lift in her tone now, a tightness.

“It was a long time ago.” The disassociated feeling evaporated. Andy felt a knot of anxiety start to coil in her stomach. 

Silence. Then: “Will you tell me?”

Asking permission, this time, rather than the expectancy of a question that must be answered. She found herself unable—or maybe unwilling—to refuse.

“It was nice, at first,” she said, and it had been. She was young and newly free, just discovering things about herself. A fresh start, when six months prior she’d been so sure of her future. Kaitlyn had walked right up to Andy at a work dinner, grabbed Andy’s hand, scrawled her number on it, and turned around without saying a word. She’d moved into Andy’s apartment after eight weeks. 

Passionate, driven, beautiful. Also: possessive, jealous, insecure. It hadn’t lasted a year. 

“She drank a lot,” Andy said at last. It was easier to blame the fighting on Kaitlyn‘s drinking. 

Miranda’s hand had stopped moving. Andy could barely feel the movement of her breath.

“Did she hurt you?” she said. Her tone was perfectly level, almost cool. 

Andy hesitated. “No.” 

She had, in fact, slapped Andy across the face when Andy had asked her to move out, then hurled her martini glass on the floor at Andy’s feet. Andy still had a scar on her thumb from cleaning up the shards.

Miranda was still for a few seconds, then: “I think that must be a lie.”

“I don’t—” Andy still couldn’t stand the smell of apple schnapps. “I don’t want to talk about this right now, Miranda.” Sharper than she’d intended. She flinched, expecting Miranda to shut down and pull away.

Instead, Miranda rolled onto her side, tipped her forehead against Andy’s, and closed her eyes. She brought one hand up to Andy’s face—thumb on Andy’s cheekbone, fingertips pressed lightly to her jaw. And she just sort of—stayed like that, her skin warm against Andy’s, her breath puffing lightly over Andy’s lips. 

“I should not have assumed,” she said quietly after a moment, opening her eyes, “that you would want wine.”

“It’s fine.” Andy pulled back enough that she didn’t have to look at Miranda cross-eyed. “Like I said. It was a long time ago.”

“Stephen is an alcoholic,” Miranda said.

The shock of it made Andy go rigid. Her hand on Miranda’s waist clamped tight almost of its own accord. She opened her mouth, but nothing came out.

Miranda was still talking. “He was not violent,” she said. “He never laid a hand on me, nor the girls. But he was a very angry man.” 

Her voice was gentle, her gaze never moving from Andy’s. Her hand had slipped into Andy’s hair. “There are things we don’t wish to see,” she said. 

Kaitlyn shoving Andy out of the way as she stormed down the hall at two in the morning. The hollow thud of Andy’s shoulder against the hall closet door. “I know,” Andy said. 

“You will see of me,” Miranda said softly, “anything you wish. Anything you ask, I will give.”

The knot in Andy’s stomach had climbed into her throat. “I can’t—” She swallowed hard. “I can’t make you that promise.” 

Miranda didn’t so much as blink. “Would it shock you so much to know that I do not require the same from you to be—” She paused, brushed her thumb over Andy’s forehead. “Happy? Fulfilled?”

Andy’s heart did a little somersault in her chest. There had _always_ been expectations of her. The promise of reciprocity, of holding up her end of the bargain. The threat of departure should she falter. “A little,” she admitted.

“Hm.” Miranda looked thoughtful. “Am I known to be cryptic?”

“Cryptic?” Andy repeated.

“Vague,” Miranda clarified.

At that, Andy let out a little bleat of laughter. “You? No.”

Miranda didn’t laugh with her, just kept her steady gaze on Andy’s. “Then let me say, in no uncertain terms, that no recompense from you is expected. Material—” she touched the earring at Andy’s left ear—“or otherwise.”

Andy’s pulse picked up. “What if I want to? Reciprocate, I mean.”

Miranda leaned forward and pressed her lips lightly against Andy’s. She smiled a little. “I didn’t say that it wouldn’t be welcome.”

*

Miranda slept. Andy was pressed against her back, a marvel of warm bare skin against her entire body. Silver curls tickling Andy’s lips and brushing the tip of her nose. The slow, steady rhythm of her breath. 

_Material_ , she’d said, _or otherwise._

_I hope you’ll stay_.

Andy tightened her arm around Miranda’s waist. Pressed her forehead to Miranda’s lovely shoulder, and closed her eyes, and tried to sleep.

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think I've got one or two chapters left in me! Might be a little while before I get them up as this week is swamped with family commitments and a bit of traveling. Porn is way harder to write than feelings, as it turns out. So many pronouns!  
> Thank you so much to all of you for reading this far. You guys are amazing and this is the best fandom ever.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for the delay, friends! it's been a busy couple of weeks.

If Andy were the protagonist of a romance novel, she would have woken before dawn, gazed longingly at Miranda asleep in the bed beside her, and kissed her awake as the sun rose. As it was, Andy woke up to full daylight and an empty bed.

She lay still, listening. She caught the faint smell of coffee, but she didn’t hear anything from downstairs. In another context, waking up alone the morning after would have sent Andy into paroxysms of anxiety, but there was something to be said for eight years of courtship. She felt weirdly peaceful. Also weirdly well-rested, even though she hadn’t fallen asleep for what felt like hours.

She closed her eyes against the near-assault of daylight streaming through Miranda’s heinously sheer window dressings. Considered, briefly, going back to sleep, but the promise of coffee—and sex, definitely more sex—was too tantalizing. She swung her legs over the side of the bed and stood up. The bathrobe she’d been wearing was still in the kitchen, so she wrapped herself in a dark gray throw blanket that probably cost as much as a month’s rent and went downstairs.

She found Miranda in the second-floor office sitting at her computer, wearing her bathrobe and a Bluetooth headset. She glanced up when Andy descended the stairs. It may have been nearly a decade, and Miranda was adorned with significantly fewer accoutrements, but Andy still recognized her _I’m working_ demeanor. 

”You’ve had _three months_ ,” Miranda said, gaze going back to her screen. “We gave you eight possibilities— _no_ , Francesca.” 

Andy raised her eyebrows at Miranda, who appeared to be pointedly ignoring her, and then she let the blanket fall.

The only indication that Miranda had noticed was the faint flush that appeared in her cheeks. Andy stood on the stairs before her, completely and totally naked and trying not to grin. She had a pretty good idea that it wasn’t a video call, or Miranda would have already shut her down. She took the non-responsiveness as an indication of encouragement.

She was two stairs from the landing, another six or so steps from Miranda, but she had no intention of closing that distance. Not yet, anyway.

She bent and shook the blanket out, draping it over the hardwood stairs, then lowered herself onto it. Stretched her legs toward Miranda, her arms toward the third floor. 

Miranda’s gaze darted away from her computer screen and back again. The flush darkened. “You asked my opinion and I gave it,” she said icily. 

Conference call, judging by the length of the silence that followed, and the phone wasn’t on mute.

So Andy would have to be very, very quiet.

She arranged herself on the blanket: one hand at her throat, the other just grazing her inner thigh. She knew Miranda hadn’t been completely lying when she said she’d bought those gifts for aesthetic reasons.

Head tipped back, fringe falling over her forehead. She closed her eyes against the late-morning sunlight.

“You’ll have to find a different venue,” Miranda said, and Andy didn’t miss the way her voice caught on the last word as Andy let the hand at her throat slide down to her breast.

She thought about the ravenous expression on Miranda’s face in the Versace dressing room. The way she’d pounced on Andy the night Andy had showed up at her door. Now she was stuck on a conference call, listening to a bunch of executives arguing, and she’d have no choice but to maintain her control. 

She slid the hand on her thigh higher, swiped one finger through her own wetness, dragged it up and down again. Let her knees fall open.

“Well, then, you’ll just have to cut the guest list, won’t you?” Miranda snapped, and now she didn’t just sound irritable, she sounded _pissed_. 

Andy opened her eyes.

Miranda wasn’t pretending to ignore her any longer. She was sitting ramrod straight, hands flat on the desk, staring at Andy with glittering eyes. Her face was bright pink. Andy could see her chest rising and falling below the robe.

_Power_. She felt drunk with it, did Miranda feel like this all the time?

She caught her nipple between thumb and forefinger, gave it a twist, felt the familiar shock of pleasure. Miranda’s jaw clenched.

She wanted to let herself moan, just to see what Miranda’s reaction would be, but she didn’t want to risk revealing herself to the executives on the other end of the call. She settled instead for stroking the skin just beside her labia with one finger, long and leisurely, one leg hiked up to give Miranda an unimpeded view. 

She saw Miranda shift on the chair. Just a little—just the tiniest movement of her hips—but Andy saw the hitch of her breath when she did it. She imagined Miranda as wet as Andy was. Imagined that she felt the same aching throb at her core. 

Andy normally used a vibrator. Fingers took too long, and Andy had _things to do_. 

Today, though, the look on Miranda’s face intensified by magnitudes every touch of Andy’s hand. She thought she could come just by watching the way Miranda’s hips tilted forward again. Once, twice, a third time. The chair rolled a little.

When Andy finally let herself slide her fingers over her clit, she couldn’t help the little moan that escaped. It wasn’t nearly loud enough to be caught by the headset, but Andy clamped her mouth shut nonetheless.

The sheer _intimacy_ of it. Holding Miranda’s gaze while she stroked herself, bolts of heat shooting through her entire body, made her feel so exposed and vulnerable that she almost closed her eyes. 

“Why is Zac Efron even on the list at _all_?” Miranda said sharply. “Take him off—” She inhaled sharply as Andy pressed her fingers hard against her clit. Quickened her pace. It wouldn’t take much, not with Miranda’s eyes on her, not with that look of sheer open lust on Miranda’s face. 

The stair riser pressing into Andy’s spine was really starting to hurt, and her left butt cheek was gradually losing all feeling, but the slip of her fingers across her clit and the pulses of heat building there were beginning to eclipse everything else. She bit down on her lower lip.

And oh—if Andy had closed her eyes, she wouldn’t have seen the sudden desperation on Miranda’s face. The slide of Miranda’s right hand, off the desk to descend beneath the folds of her robe.

It was too much. Miranda’s eyes gone vague and glassy, the part of her lips, the soft rustle of the robe as her hand moved beneath it. Andy’s back hit the stair riser so hard as she came that she knew there’d be a bruise there tomorrow. 

It wasn’t earth-shattering, nothing like the previous night, and she recovered fast. Miranda’s head was down, her eyes half-closed, her hips rocking into her own hand. She was breathing fast. The call, apparently, had been abandoned. Andy really, really hoped she’d hung up.

She stood on wobbly legs—staggered left, as her foot had gone numb—recovered, and crossed the threshold to the desk. The phone had, she saw, been muted. 

It was _rude_ to interrupt, Andy knew, but she really felt like she could improve the situation. Miranda made a soft sound of distress when Andy pulled her hands away. Looked up at Andy with fierce and fiery eyes. 

It didn’t take any more prompting than that.

Andy dropped to the floor, pulled Miranda’s knees apart, and shoved the robe out of the way. No lace this time, just plain black satin, which Andy found exponentially hotter. 

Miranda’s hips lifted a little, as though she expected Andy to pull the underwear off. Andy slid her hands up Miranda’s thighs and gently pushed her back down.

She heard Miranda’s soft gasp, felt her body stiffen. She reached up to tug at Miranda’s waistband, putting tension in the fabric right at Miranda’s clit. A moan, now, and Miranda’s hips began to rock in earnest as Andy tongued her through the satin.

She pulled a little harder, feeling Miranda jerk when she did it. She was soaked already and Andy’s tongue slid salty-sweet over the slick fabric. 

“ _Andrea—_ ” A pleading note in her voice. 

Andy took a few more swipes over the satin, taking deep satisfaction in the escalation of Miranda’s moans, but yeah, okay, the fabric was sort of making her tongue go numb, and besides, she wanted to taste _Miranda,_ not six-hundred-dollar lingerie. She slid the underwear down, and Miranda lifted just enough for her to pull it off and cast it aside.

And then Andy’s whole mouth was on Miranda’s slick and swollen flesh, and Miranda was making the most gorgeous sounds Andy had ever heard in her entire fucking life. The previous night, Miranda had been tight as a bowstring, gasping toward each climax with desperate ferocity. Now she was lax and supple, undulating in Andy’s hands like the ocean. Andy was soaked from chin to chest, the movements of her tongue were complete nonsense, and her lower lip kept catching on her teeth, and yet Miranda was moaning as though this was the first time she’d ever been touched in her life.

She reached up. Let her fingertips slide alongside her tongue. Then pressed forward, just a little, experimentally.

“ _Ahh_ ,” Miranda gasped. 

Andy pulled back. “I’m sorry,” she started to say, but Miranda cut her off.

“You can,” she said, her eyes bright, pupils dilated.

“Oh _yes_ ,” Andy growled, and got back to it. She pressed forward, one finger sliding into Miranda, and she felt Miranda clench and tighten around her. Felt Miranda’s movements almost completely stop.

Gentle laps with her tongue as she slipped a second finger in beside the first, and this time Miranda let out a long, low groan and started to move again. 

Andy curled her fingers a little, not quite finding the spot, but Miranda didn’t seem to mind. Faster now, and Andy could feel Miranda tightening around her. Could hear Miranda growing louder, louder still. 

She wanted to slow down, make it last, because she was _really_ enjoying herself, but it was pretty clear that Miranda was rapidly approaching the point of no return. So Andy matched Miranda’s movement’s with her tongue, and her hand, and when Miranda’s body arched and tensed, she deepened her strokes and curled her fingers until Miranda was crying out and shuddering and pulsing around her. It lasted so long that Andy actually got a tongue cramp, which she decided on the spot was the greatest thing to have ever happened to her in her life. 

“ _Oh_ ,” Miranda gasped finally, rolling the chair a few inches backwards and away from Andy’s still-lapping tongue. “That was—Andrea, that was really—” She propped one elbow on the desk for support and looked at Andy with an expression caught somewhere between bewilderment and elation. 

Andy grinned and pulled herself to her feet. “Meetings,” she said, “am I right?”

Miranda made a face that was clearly supposed to be a grimace of disapproval, but fell significantly short. “Andrea.”

Andy shook her head gravely. “Poor Zac Efron,” she said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It’s been a little while so if you see continuity errors, please tell me!!! <3


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> words!

“Do  _ not _ tell me you’re going into work.” Andy rolled onto her stomach and put her chin on her folded arms.

Miranda came out of the closet holding a dress in muted gold. She arched an eyebrow at Andy and pulled it over her head. “No,” she said. “ _ We _ are going out.”

“Mmmnnnghh,” Andy said, stretching both arms out in front of her and burying her face in the sheets. “Don’t make me.”

“I believe I told you last night that you needed a coat.” 

“ _ Now _ ?” Andy said into the bed. “I told you, my coat is—”

Miranda cut her off. “Andrea, I cannot understand a  _ word  _ you are saying.” 

Andy lifted her head. She was still warm-skinned and thrumming from the four orgasms Miranda had generously bestowed on her, but that didn’t mean she was completely lost to reason. “I said, my coat is fine,” she said.

Miranda raked a brush through her wintry hair. “Nonetheless,” she replied, sounding unperturbed. 

“I can get one online,” Andy pointed out.

Miranda put the brush down and swiveled in her chair, very slowly, until she was fully facing Andy. She didn’t say a word. 

Andy spluttered. Laughed. 

“Okay, Miranda,” she said, rolling off the bed and standing up. “Let’s go get a coat.”

*

Miranda acquiesced to Andy’s insistence that she could wear jeans two days in a row, but she wouldn’t budge on a second day in the sweater. Andy was significantly bustier than Miranda, so she was a little surprised when the polka-dotted Dolce and Gabbana corset top fit perfectly.

“Not your usual style,” she observed, turning sideways to examine her profile in Miranda’s full-length three-way mirror.

“No,” Miranda said. “It’s not.”

Her words sounded deliberate, weighted with something Andy didn’t quite understand. She frowned. “What do you—” And broke off as Miranda’s meaning sank in.

“You’re kidding me.” Andy brushed past Miranda and opened the closet door. 

Familiar scent of Miranda’s perfume. On her left, floor-to-ceiling shoes lined one entire wall of the bedroom-sized closet. On her right hung dresses and jackets and skirts, impeccably organized by color and style—probably hundred of thousands of dollars’ worth. Along the back wall were shelves and shelves of handbags, each carefully placed beneath display lighting,  _ definitely _ hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth.

And in a small section beside the handbags, Andy saw a handful of blouses, dresses, and trousers. Black and gray and dark green, all soft fabric and gentle lines, nothing like the crisp jackets and tailored trousers Miranda normally wore. She spied a gold Chanel logo on the sleeve of one of the shirts. 

She whirled toward Miranda, who had come up behind her. “You didn’t.”

Miranda didn’t look at all abashed. “I thought it best to be prepared,” she said, with a minuscule lift of her shoulders.

Andy opened her mouth, but she found that she didn’t have a single word. 

“You don’t  _ have _ to wear the jeans,” Miranda added.

Andy took a step back, and then another, until she was out of the closet entirely. Her hands had gone numb. Something spiky and uncomfortable was coiling itself into painful knots in the pit of her stomach.

A little frown had appeared on Miranda’s face. “Andrea,” she said.

“No,” Andy said automatically.

Miranda’s eyebrows shot up. “Excuse me?” 

“I mean,” Andy said hurriedly, trying to ignore the her rising anxiety. “You didn’t have to do that. I have—I have  _ clothes _ , Miranda.”

“I certainly wasn’t trying to imply that you didn’t,” Miranda said, and there was a little edge in her tone now. 

“It’s just that—” Andy stopped. Flapped her hands helplessly at her sides. “The presents were one thing, Miranda, but—”

“But?” 

No mistaking it now. There was danger in Miranda’s voice, embers starting to glow in her eyes. 

“ _ Oh _ .” Andy felt like stomping her feet in frustration. “Don’t do that, Miranda, come on.”

Miranda turned away, went back to her vanity, sat down. “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”

“Oh yes you do,” Andy followed her and stood behind her, watching as Miranda picked up a brush and began furiously sweeping blush over her cheekbones. “I’m trying to tell you how I feel about something, Miranda. Don’t cut me off at the knees.”

Miranda froze mid-swipe. She lowered the brush very slowly and placed it on the vanity. Her shoulders sagged a little.

“No,” she said quietly. “Forgive me.”

The ire in her tone had vanished. She sounded smaller, somehow, vulnerable, and it suddenly clicked _.  _ She hadn’t been angry at Andy’s reaction. She’d turned defensive because she was  _ embarrassed _ .

Andy bit her lip. She’d theorized that the anonymous gift-giver was Miranda for so long, had been so caught up in her shock that it actually  _ was _ , that she hadn’t considered Miranda’s perspective at all. She thought of herself a pretty empathetic person, for the most part, but it had never occurred to her that her empathy might need to extend to Miranda.

Eight years was a long time to hope.

Andy got up and went back into the closet. She went to the rack of clothing, all in her size, all with the tags still on them. Looked at each item one at a time. Prada, Dolce, Givenchy. Chanel and Tom Ford. A Lhullier gown with rose-gold appliquéd flowers. Beneath the clothes, still in their boxes on the lower shelf of the closet, were four shoeboxes. Two pairs of Louboutin heels—a reasonable four inches in height—and two pairs of Jimmy Choos, each lovelier than the last.

She came out of the closet. Miranda was still at the vanity. She wasn’t putting on makeup; she was just sitting there, toying with the outsized emerald ring on her right hand. 

Andy sat down on the bed and watched her. She gave no indication that she had anything to say, so Andy spoke first.

“They’re, um, really beautiful things,” Andy said softly.

Miranda bristled visibly. “ _ Pieces _ , Andrea, please. Not  _ things,”  _ she said, and for a moment the defensive shell fell away and she sounded like herself again.

“Pieces,” Andy corrected hurriedly. “And, um. It looks like you—”  _ phrasing, Sachs, be careful.  _ “It looks like you put a lot of, of—care into it. Picking them, I mean.”

Miranda’s lips tightened and she made a noncommittal noise. She didn’t look at Andy.

“This is...” Andy looked down at her hands, twisted together in her lap. “Miranda, what you’ve done—what you’ve been doing—no one has ever thought of me this much.”

Quick dart of blue eyes to the right. Miranda looked at Andy for a split second, then away again. “I’m sure that’s not true,” she said evenly.

“Believe what you want,” Andy said. “What I’m telling you is that I didn’t—it means the world to me. I don’t know if I told you that, but it does.”

Miranda’s gaze went to somewhere in the neighborhood of Andy’s knees. “All right.”

“I just.” Andy exhaled hard, looked toward the windows. “I just don’t understand  _ why.” _

When she’d asked on Tuesday, Miranda’s reply had been—well, facetious, almost. And the answer she’d given after that had been a half-truth, if that. Andy wasn’t sure it was totally wise to ask again, but she  _ had _ just found a treasure trove in Miranda’s closet, and at this point she kind of thought a more committed answer was warranted. 

The silence that followed was almost unbearable. Miranda took a deep breath, and then another.

“If I had asked you in Paris,” she said at last, very quietly, “we both would have made a mistake.”

Andy’s head moved back at least six inches. “You don’t know that,” she said.

“You were too young,” Miranda said.

Andy stiffened, feeling a hot flash of anger flare in her chest. She sat up straight. “Miranda—”

“And I was too stubborn,” MIranda finished.

Andy shut her mouth.

“You found my behavior appalling,” Miranda said, twisting the ring on her finger. 

“No—” Andy said, even though it was true.

“You were principled.” Miranda stopped playing with the ring and looked Andy in the eye. “It was one of the things I missed after—” She paused. “After you were gone.”

Andy looked away, suddenly uncomfortable. “To a fault. I shouldn’t have walked away.”

“No,” Miranda said, “you shouldn’t have.” She sighed. “But I understand why you did.”

It was extremely difficult to keep from yelling _Okay, I need to pause for a minute_ because the enormity of what Miranda had just said nearly knocked Andy right off the bed. Instead, she said, “I would have come back if you’d asked.”

Miranda huffed a little laugh. “No, you would not.”

“No,” Andy agreed after a moment, and let herself smile a little in response. “You’re right.”

“The first was...” Miranda reached up absently with one hand and touched her throat, as though brushing her fingers over an imaginary scarf. “Something of an impulse. Emily was still recovering, and your replacement was—” She made a face. “Inadequate.”

“You missed me.” Andy tried a tiny, teasing smile.

Miranda didn’t smile back. “Yes,” she said. “And I suppose I wanted you to know.”

The snarl of nerves in Andy’s stomach was starting to uncoil. Her chest felt suddenly warm. “And the rest?”

Miranda let her hand fall into her lap. “You’ve been very successful in your career, Andrea.”

The warmth in Andy’s chest cooled a bit. “Uh, thanks,” she said. 

“When you worked for me—” Miranda tripped over these words a little, as though saying them felt physically uncomfortable—“something changed after Nigel started dressing you.”

“I did do some of that myself,” Andy pointed out.

“Yes,” Miranda said, “you did. You were—confident. Self-possessed. I...noticed you. As I hadn’t before.”

Well, that just made Andy straight-up blush, which was sort of ridiculous, since she’d been naked in Miranda’s bed not an hour before.

“You gave Emily what you’d received in Paris, and I wanted—I didn’t want you to lose what you’d gained at Runway when you moved on.”

_ Oh _ .

Andy sat absolutely motionless, waiting. Things—vague, confusing, cloudy things—were starting to fall into place in her brain. She felt like one of them was on the verge of an epiphany. Unfortunately, she wasn’t totally sure which of them it was.

Miranda looked away. “When you wore the Prada,” she said, very softly, “how did you feel?”

Andy swallowed hard, feeling the blush intensify. “Um,” she said. “I felt—I felt good.”

Miranda’s gaze swung back to hers. She was clearly waiting for something more.

Andy cleared her throat. Bit back the awkwardness, and said it. “I felt beautiful,” she said.

The expectant look on Miranda’s face cleared, and beneath it was something Andy couldn’t quite identify. She looked softer, somehow, when she nodded.

“And after I knew for sure it was you—” Andy looked down at her bare feet. The red polish on her toenails was starting to chip. “I felt...”  _ Valued _ ? No. Admired? 

“Precious,” she said at last, her face burning. 

The slight hitch of Miranda’s breath made her look up. Andy knew, now, why she hadn’t understood the expression on Miranda’s face a moment before. She hadn’t seen anyone look at her like that in a very, very long time. 

Her eyes stung. She blinked hard. 

“Come on,” she said, standing up and reaching for Miranda’s hand. “Let’s go shopping.”

*


	9. epilogue

Miranda was right. Her coat wasn’t warm enough.

Andy whuffed out a shivery breath as she entered the blissful warmth of Bergdorf Goodman. The gloves, though beautiful to look at and heavenly to wear, were not intended for twenty-degree weather. Miranda might not like it, but New York winters needed GoreTex. 

“No fur,” Andy said, as Miranda steered her toward the elevator. 

Miranda shot her a withering glance. “I _have_ met you,” she said. 

Third floor was coats, but Miranda hit four. “Um...?” Andy said, then saw the tiny print next to the elevator button. _Personal Styling_. Of course.

“You know, you don’t have to rent out a private dressing room every time we do this,” Andy said.

Miranda looked amused. “Shall I assume, then, that you’ll permit future purchases?”

“Oh.” Andy blushed. “I didn’t mean—”

“I believe you did,” Miranda said.

Andy bit her lip and looked down. “Yeah,” she said, as the elevator doors opened. “Well. Maybe I did.”

They were greeted by the Bergdorf Goodman equivalent of Charles and Kimberly, who presented Miranda with a rack of coats. They were absolutely nothing Miranda would ever have chosen for herself, which, absurdly, made Andy’s heart flip-flop in her chest.

“This is extremely warm,” Andy admitted, zipping a Moncler puffer coat to her chin.

“If you’d permit a fox trim at the hood—” 

“No,” Andy said firmly, then leaned over and kissed Miranda lightly on the cheek. “But thank you, Miranda. This is really—this is—”

She broke off, suddenly unable to find the words. 

“I do not wish for you ever to be cold,” Miranda said, coming up behind Andy.

Andy turned her head enough to touch her forehead to Miranda’s. “Even when you’re not with me.”

Miranda’s breath caught. Andy felt her hand land lightly on the back of the coat. 

“I rather hope,” she said, her words a little stilted now, a little stiff, “that that will be the exception in the future, rather than the rule.”

Andy’s heart didn’t just flip; it stopped altogether. She actually _felt_ the blood drain from her face.

It was an insane thing to say. It was an insane thing to even _think_. It had been less than a week since she’d walked back into Miranda’s life. They barely knew each other.

And still.

She turned in Miranda’s arms. Nudged forward, gently, until her lips were snug against Miranda’s. 

“Why do you say things like that?” she murmured.

Miranda pulled back and looked at her, a tiny smile on her lips. “To get you to make that face,” she said, and kissed Andy again.

*

[ _This isn’t over yet (Ellery)_ ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fsx_PFUMECY)

_Said we’ll start slow_

_We’ve gotta have somewhere to go_

_If you push, if you push, it’ll all go to pieces_

_Said we’ll start small_

_Pretend like nothing’s there at all_

_Till the ground, till the ground starts to shake underneath us_

_This isn’t over, over yet_

_This isn’t half of what you’ll get_

_This isn’t over, over—_

_Let me show you where it’s going_

_I love a quiet room for playing hard to get_

_When the light, when the light from the window is fading_

_I love your lips_

_The oh, inevitable kiss_

_When you breathe, when you breathe with the effort of waiting_

_This isn’t over, over yet_

_This isn’t half of what you’ll get_

_This isn’t over, over, let me show you where it’s going_

_The deep blue sea_

_Is tame compared to you and me_

_When we fell, when we fell, we fell hard in a hurry_

_This isn’t over, over yet_

_This isn’t half of what you’ll get_

_This isn’t over, over yet_

_This isn’t half of what you’ll get_

_This isn’t over, over yet_

_This isn’t half of what you’ll get_

_This isn’t over, over, let me show you where it’s going_

_Where it’s going_

_Where it’s going_


End file.
